Ghosts at the Old Library is our Christmas ghost stories project.
This winter we have commissioned six of the North West’s finest writers to create brand new ghost stories, each taking a local landmark as their inspiration.
These have been published as Christmas cards which are now available to order.
Ghosts at the Old Library: Six Ghost Stories for Christmas.
Set of six ghost stories published as individual Christmas cards with envelopes.
Each set contains six ghost stories published as individual Christmas cards with envelopes in a presentation box.
The Stories
• The Gift by Marie Crook: Orchestrating a fraudulent séance, Ellen fabricates messages of solace to provide her neighbours with hope. However, when a stranger enters the building, the past threatens to intrude on the present.
• Advent by Gaynor Jones: As Christmas approaches, Chloe buys her mother an antique mirror, but finds it appears to hold a power, one which Chloe is drawn to.
• Magic Eye by Jo Howard: A trainee teacher strives to connect with a mute refugee with a mysterious past. Bonding over a magic eye book, they discover an they may share more history than meets the eye.
• Gratitude by Lauren O’Donoghue: Struggling with grief, a young woman finds mysterious offerings of soil materialising in her home.
• The Continuum by Nicholas Royle: When a cryptic message from an old acquaintance reignites forgotten connections, Nick finds himself drawn into the life Mark, a former classmate who he doesn’t recall. But is their shared past truly over?
• The Loop by Dyani Sheppard: While running on a footpath which was once an isolated former railway line, Helen discovers an eerie harmony lies beneath the cadence of her steps.
Online
We have worked with our in-house community radio station ALL FM to create recordings of each of the stories. The authors were invited into the studios to record their stories, which have been professionally produced, featuring music and sound design by musician and sound artist Oscilloscope. The soundtrack on all the tracks is comprised of audio recorded in the Old Library building which was then manipulated and then transformed into music and effects.
Stay tuned for more details on these!
The Authors
Marie Crook writes poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work has been published in The Real Story, The Caterpillar and Confingo and she runs the creative writing workshop series Feed the Fox.
Gaynor Jones is the author of Among These Animals. She has won the Northern Writer’s Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, among others.
Jo Howard is a writer of children’s and young adult fiction and a poet, singer and scriptwriter. A regular on the Northern spoken word scene, Jo runs Book Jive Live, a Zoom open mic for kidlit and YA. Her work has been published in Confingo, The Writer’s Cafe and Funny Pearls magazines and in the 100 Voices anthology to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage.
Lauren O’Donoghue is a writer from South Yorkshire. Her fiction has been published in ergot, and Mslexia among others. Her interactive fiction Ataraxia can be found here.
Nicholas Royle is the author of five collections of short fiction, two works of nonfiction and seven novels, most recently First Novel. He edits an annual series of anthologies called Best British Short Stories and runs Nightjar Press which publishes original short stories
Dyani Sheppard is a writer based in Manchester.
The Events
We arranged three immersive and atmospheric reading events at the Old Library as a key aspect of the Ghosts at the Old Library project.
On three evenings in December, the building was dimly lit by lantern light and four separate spaces in the building were each allocated to one of the writers. The audience was then split into four groups and led by volunteers from one room to the next, hearing each story read in full before moving on to the next room. This meant each of the stories being performed simultaneously four times by each author.
Ghosts at the Old Library is produced with support from ALLFM and Arts Council England.
